The present invention is in the field of telephony including multimedia communications. The present invention has particular application to methods for call priority assignment, distribution, and override for call distributing and routing functions associated with incoming calls from multiple service control points (SCP""s) to a communication center. The methods pertain more particularly to assigning priority states to calls based on user input of value contribution.
The present invention relates to call-centers in the art of telephony systems. Call centers, more recently referred to as communication centers because of media advances serve a client base in some form of service capacity and are well known in the art. In a typical communication center agents are employed at agent stations having at least one telephone, and in most cases other communication and processing equipment, such as a personal computer with a video display unit (PC/VDU).
Modern communication centers are computer-telephone integrated (CTI). In a CTI system a processor is connected to the switching equipment by a CTI link, and the processor runs CTI applications controlling the switch. PC/VDUs at agent stations may be interconnected on a local area network (LAN) also connected to the CTI processor.
Development of CTI communication centers has made it possible for agents to interact with callers (clients) in more ways than just by telephone. In a suitably equipped communication center, agents can operate with E-mail, Video mail, Video calls, and Internet Protocol Network Telephony (IPNT) calls as well as plain old telephony service (POTS) calls, which are more recently classified as connection-orientated-switched-telephony (COST). A communication center may be linked to other communication centers, databases, and the like in a variety of ways, such as by local area networks (LAN), wide area networks (WAN), including the World Wide Web (WWW).
Call routing to and within call centers involves processors and software dedicated to the task. To distribute incoming calls to agents in a communication center, the distribution system has to have some criteria for distribution. Most commonly there is capability for the distribution system to track which ones of phones are on-hook or off-hook, so the system may monitor which agents are busy on calls or not busy. In a simple schema then, calls are distributed on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) queue basis to available agents.
It has occurred to the inventors that a desirable goal relating to call center communication is to have agents busy on high priority calls rather than spending a lot of time covering calls of a lesser importance. For example, a high priority call may be a sales order call wherein the caller is purchasing a product or service over the telephone. A lesser priority call may be a caller who is just curious about the product or service and has a few questions to ask the agent. In a typical first in first out (FIFO) queue situation, the fist call in is the first call out regardless of importance of the call, and there is typically no facility for prioritizing calls. It would be desirable as well to be able to transfer a higher priority call to be taken by an agent who is currently engaged with a lower priority call, without having to lose the original call.
If priority states are to be observed in a communication center where incoming calls are sourced from different routing systems, then it is desirable to blend the two objectives thus taking into account the problem of assigning priority levels for all incoming calls, and the problem of certain calls receiving preferential treatment because they are sourced from a lower latency routing system.
A method is known to the inventor for promoting fairness in a communication center in response to requests for destination numbers (DNs) from network-level routers. The method includes steps for determining latency for requests from individual network-level routers, receiving a request from a first router for which latency is determined, assigning a fairness wait time to the request, the time determined as an inverse function of latency, and answering the request according to rules in effect only after the wait time has expired. In some cases requests arrive with priority, and priority is used in conjunction with latency in determining wait time. In other cases a second fairness time is imposed, after which a fairness algorithm is called to award a DN according to statistical history and call priority. The system is useful for communication centers for connection-oriented telephone systems, Internet protocol systems, and for all sorts of digital messaging and mail systems.
It has occurred to the inventor that fairness routing and priority routing schemes mentioned above can be further enhanced if a competitiveness factor among center clients (users) were allowed to help determine call or message priority. In the current system there is no provision for enabling a client to change his or her priority assignment in queue other than the algorithms and other factors taken into account at the time of routing of his or her call event.
What is clearly needed is a system and method for enabling a client of a communication center to enhance his or her own priority designation in a priority queue by offering, in real time, something of value to the center. A system and method such as this would further enhance profitability of the enterprise hosting the center.